I don’t know if like me you are getting sick to death of hearing and reading the following phrases:
WE NEED TO. WE VALUE YOUR PRIVACY, WHAT LESSON SHOULD WE LEARN. LET ME BE VERY CLEAR. 110 PERCENT. ETC.
Unfortunately, we treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people where we can dump ecological degradation, technological risk, nuclear waste, and the public debt, and that we feel at liberty to plunder as we please.
If you have a young child, she or he will likely talk to computers — naturally, as he or she does with you — for the rest of his or her life and the computer will not need to or learn lessons.
We are standing on the precipice of life-altering technologies, but unable to break free from a continuous cycle of surprise and fear because we can’t come together to address collectively the existing problems not to mention what is awaiting us all down the road.
Global warming is the greatest existential challenge of our age, requiring massive societal changes to mitigate and adapt to it.
However, there is another threat that is being ignored to our peril.
With politicians (the vast majority of whom do not have any background in science or technology) unable to look past the next election, making important policy decisions with little regard to how they will affect the planet and country 20, 50, or 100 years from now.
This is why Governments need to set up a Department for the Future, depoliticized technology and science.
The citizens of tomorrow are granted no rights. There are no government departments or world organization bodies to represent their concerns or potential views on decisions today that will undoubtedly affect their lives.
Representative – democracy systematically ignores the interest of future people.
The world is presently experiencing a new form of colonization not by wars but by Digital Data, combined with climate change.
This colonization is presently happing between China and the USA.
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The “Digital Divide,” is the gulf between those with access to both the necessary technology and the information accessible with it and those who do not.
The immediate concern is that those with the technology will acquire the necessary skills for the twenty-first century and those without will not, further widening the economic chasm between the lower-income strata and those who manage the data.
Technology has an obsoleting impact on those without the proper skills and, with the speed at which the technology changes, it is very difficult – near impossible for some – to keep current.
This will become even more of a concern when the wealthier private and public school systems began to acquire personal computer networks and internet connections while schools in poorer neighborhoods will not.
Those who grow up with technology assimilate it into themselves;
“WE value your Privacy “
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There will constantly be new tools – the cloud, big data, location analysis, etc. – and ones of which we have not yet heard.
In A Data-Driven World, it will be too late unless we establish an organization
that can understand the context of all Future interactions.
Those who do not embrace them may be ambushed by them and by a younger generation pushing them out the door.
When it comes to Robots.
The Three Laws are:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
By Isaac Asimov in his 1942 short story “Runaround.”
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the
We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.
All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.
In the next few months, we will once again witness a gathering of verbal diarrhea in Scotland all promising to go green.
There is no doubting in the last few decades that we humans have achieved advances away beyond what our ancestors would have believed possible. The irony is that to survive we have to become something very different from what we are.
Many optimists believe that technology can transform society and solve climate change.
To a great extent, this is probably true no more so than in the field of medician.
Take the discovery by Alexander Fleming in 1928 of Penicillin.
Before its discovery, we were dying thirty years early than we do today.
His discovery was down to an accidental piece of bacteria landing on one of his Petri dishes which took another ten years to develop into a drug to save lives.
Today with human intelligence and machine learning we can produce drugs in a matter of months.
The way forward to reducing CO2 emissions is not a by-pass lane it is by using the technologies that already exist.
It’s time to cut out the verbal and bull shit and make these technologies affordable to all.
Yes, the world today is in a dire state and a new kind of social and ecological environment needs to be created with green energy the price of which is toppling daily.
Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls, but every problem is solvable if we devote resources to building a just world and not guns.
THE WORLD RUNS ON ELECTRICITY.
SO IF WE WANT A GREEN FUTURE NON-REPAYABLE GRANTS TO CONVERT FROM FOSSIL FUELS GENERATED ELECTRIC TO ENERGY BY NON-POLLUTING RENEWABLE MATERIALS – WIND – SUN- WATER- GEOTHERMAL – HYDROGEN.
SUCH A MOVE WOULD CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS AND COULD BE FUNDED BY PLACING A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ON ALL ACTIVITIES THAT HAVE PROFIT FOR-PROFIT SAKE AT THEIR HEART. ( See previous posts)
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We are now presented with two very different futures.
The last generation that can stop devastating climate change. We have the knowledge and the tools – we just need politicians to lead the way.
or
We fail to meet climate mitigation goals.
For certain, either outcome will not be easy or cheap and it is happing faster than we wish to acknowledge.
The problem is the two outcomes are profoundly interlocked with lots of uncertainty.
HOWEVER, UNLIKE THE CURRENT PANDEMIC CLIMATE CHANGE WON’T JUST DISAPPEAR IT WILL REQUIRE A NEW MEANING OF LIFE.
To recognize that we are entering a new world with opportunities and perspectives is an enormous challenge not because of climate change but because of the current inequalities existing on the Planet.
The choice we are now confronted with is one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.
The question is who is going to pay for the transition.
New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.
THERE IS LITTLE POINT IN REDUCING GLOBAL TEMPERATURES IF BY THE TIME IT HAS STABILIZED HALF OF THE WORLDS POPULATION HAS BEEN DESTABILIZED OR DISPLACED.
A lack of global emphasis on foreign aid, conflict, and political factors have kept poverty as a driving factor of Inequality.
To adjust to the coming new kind of social and ecological environment, how do we frame either of the above outcomes constructively.
We will have to relearn the world to do so.
We have to become more aware of the future of our planet and our future and the legacy of the human species to start a serious battle to make up for the damages.
At the moment it is difficult to know the changes in the ecosystems that surround us not to mention the social uncertainty to come.
The fundamental economic problem is related to the issue of scarcity.
Society is mostly dominated by people wishing to consume more goods and services that are available.
One in nine people in the world go hungry each day and suffer from nutritional deficiencies as a result.
Currently, 1 in 9 people lack access to clean water across the world.
The problem is not that we aren’t producing enough food, but rather that people lack access to food. Many people do not have enough money to purchase food and cannot grow their own.
To try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them is impossible unless we address the fundamental problem.
To recognize that scarcity will drive almost everything.
To recognize a sense of shared humanity.
To recognize that approximately 600 million children are not mastering basic mathematics and literacy while at school.
To recognize that is not just climate change that treating the world but artificial intelligence and the way we are using it.
Using only the interaction of its embedded sensors, computer programming, and algorithms in the human environment and ecosystem — is becoming a reality that cannot be ignored anymore.
Because building autonomous weapons systems are one thing but using them in algorithmic warfare with other nations and against other humans is another.
They will in no uncertain terms alter the very fundamentals of security and the future of humanity and peace.
As global temperatures continue to rise, technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale with the weaponizing of artificial intelligence both military-wise and as a social tool.
The Weaponization Of Artificial Intelligence
The development of autonomous weapons system (AWS) is progressing rapidly, and this increase in the weaponization of artificial intelligence seems to have become a highly destabilizing development. It brings complex security challenges for not only each nation’s decision-makers but also for the future of humanity.
There are always unforeseen consequences when new technology is introduced. Those unintended outcomes of artificial intelligence will likely challenge us all.
AI algorithms must be built to align with the overarching goals of humans.
As more and more data is collected about every single minute of every person’s day, our privacy gets compromised.
Look at what is happing in China with its social credit system, it could devolve into social oppression.
Unless you choose to live remotely and never plan to interact with the modern world, your life will be significantly impacted by artificial intelligence.
The transformative impact of artificial intelligence on our society will have far-reaching economic, legal, political, and regulatory implications that we need to be discussing and preparing for.
Sure, it can transform our lives for the better.
In fact, people have gotten used to depending on AI for almost everything and can’t imagine not having these technological advancements as part of their life. Because many processes and applications are getting automated, people are getting addicted to these kinds of inventions which can be an issue for future generations to come.
Societies will face further challenges in directing and investing in technologies that benefit humanity instead of destroying it or intruding on basic human rights of privacy and freedom of access to information.
In the future, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence will play an even more fundamental role in content creation that will affect our wallets, health, safety, and lives.
The mistake we are making is to think that this situation is the only future.
That it is impossible to regulate AI because of the rate of AI change entails.
This is not true as it is possible to Audit all AI technology and algorithms to ensure that comply with human values and to make their programs totally transparent.
Why is the above urgent?
Because combined with climate change we are faced with and a transactional wealth of a new currency of unknowable value called personal data inequality will ravage the planet we all live in and on.
These are not some science fiction movie scenarios the current Pandemic is revealing a much more tragic and fragile world that requires more than trust.
The United Nations (UN) currently lists 22 “Global Issues”.
These correspond with the most important issues of our time and are known as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).
Here is a few of them.
FOOD SECURITY.
HEALTH ISSUES.
EDUCATION.
GENDER EQUALITY.
AFRICA.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES/ POLLUTION.
OCEAN CONSERVATION.
WATER SCARCITY.
GLOBAL ISSUES THAT REQUIRE POLICY SOLUTIONS.
This is not intended to be an exhaustive list. Rather, it serves as an overview of some of the major issues all global citizens should be aware of.
Artificial intelligence is not on the list.
Because the biggest challenge facing the planet needs every solution possible including technology like artificial intelligence (AI).
But AI is not a silver bullet it can only unlock new insights, pinpointing those responsible for it.
The current environmental issues pose so many problems to industry and society that not enough action has been taken to stop turning Climate change into a product.
My goal in this blog is not to convince people climate change is real, or that AI is destroying society it’s to get people who do believe that climate change is real and that Algorithms for profit’s sake are plundering the world to do more to affect change.
What can be done by any of us against the might of Capitalism that will have any effect?
There is only one weapon available to us all and that is our buying power.
If we use our collective buying power you will then see not just governments but global corporations change their tune from profit to sustainability.
We decide whether we want to look at the world in one way or another, always making tradeoffs.
As Harvey Sacks observed.
” If only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be transformed”
” But the best and brightest devices must be accommodated within existing practices and assumptions in a world that has whatever organization it already has”
All are under threat because all are happening at what scientists estimate to be about 1,000 times the normal pace and are yet to be quantified.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
(Six-minute read) Before life becomes electrical pulses with the arrival of quantum computers that will analyze big data in real-time the world needs to ensure that all data collection and its uses are totally transparent.
Since we constantly leave data in our wake, even casual technology users have no problem finding two points through which to draw a line.
We all know Big Data is well on its way to transforming the art of marketing into science and currently, the world that we live in becoming more and more ruled by data.
One of the more recent frightening things is seeing Amazon algorithms that could figure out if a woman were pregnant or if a man were gay.
If this sort of information is collected and used in future algorithms, the idea that programs, apps, or services could infer psychological data based on tests that have no psychological rigor is not just dangerous but against what is left of human rights.
That’s the sort of stuff where I feel like we need to be very conscious and cautious. The data we’re collecting and what data we’re sharing are vital because it is really on the proliferation of devices and social media in ways that go far beyond what appears to be on its face. To rule all aspects of life.
Online data is more than just a collection of ones and zeros, every piece of data a company records can be cross-referenced against other databases.
This is not hypothetical or scientist fiction use of data but rather a cultural change in the way we work, play, and communicate with each other.
The data revolution has only just started and the changes are substantial.
Take the Chinese Government’s recent introduction of a social credit system that relies on thousands of data inputs, including frivolous spending, or even playing too many video games.
Or The South Korean app that tracked the locations of all new visitors to the country, while registration was necessary for facilities such as gyms, restaurants, and malls, and people who broke quarantine were asked to wear a location-tracking bracelet.
You might think that these examples are in countries that do not operate as open democratic countries but ask yourself where are all the track and trace data due to covid going to end up.
Where are we today when it comes to data collection?
What are the biggest threats to our personal rights and freedoms in the age of technology?
There’s little doubt that data holds huge value in the fight against COVID-19 and the return to some resemblance of normality for citizens. That doesn’t, however, give collectors of public data the permission to use it as they please.
Contact tracing solutions are one of the primary ways in which public data has been collected over the course of the pandemic.
However COVID-19-related data should commit to only using the data for purposes that contribute to fighting the pandemic. This citizen data should be deleted as soon as it loses its relevance. This is not happing. Rather its collection is intensifying with the introduction of the Covid passport.
Contact-tracing apps have been portrayed as anonymized, deletable, and non-violating of existing privacy laws. However, the jury is still out on that.
For example, data on who contracted the virus in certain neighborhoods and which locations acted as epicenters might contribute to prejudices forming about those areas.
There’s no question that the public data accessible through contact tracing is of extreme value to government bodies that seek to increase surveillance on their citizens.
In addition to contact tracing apps, significant amounts of medical data are also being gathered, stored, and shared by hospitals and system providers with mandatory testing and temperature monitoring to ensure workplace safety.
All of these data collection practice calls into question how this data is being stored and used.When it comes to employer access to data, there are already issues forming here.
If employers have access to employees’ or potential employees’ health data, they could use it against them and allow citizens’ health history to impact their employment opportunities.
We are well on the way to what I call – The unregulated invasivity spectrum.
As this totally unregulated technology continues to evolve our personal and professional lives will be affected significantly.
There are some serious debates about the acceptable use of data.
For example, when is it OK to collect data or metadata (which traces the patterns of the information gathered) about the citizens of a country?
Organizations managing citizen data must be made under the law to open their processes for third-party review to ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
What is acceptable?
With the Internet of Things growing at a staggering rate and artificial intelligence experiencing a renaissance, it’s little wonder that Big Data is taking center stage.
When combined with artificial intelligence, Big Data has proven itself a powerful tool in the fight against cybercrime, and collaboration and data-sharing have the potential to make networks far more difficult to compromise.
How do you challenge an algorithm and what’s the process for fixing the error?
The Information Age is still not in full effect, however, our world is increasingly reliant on computer technology which is evolving along the way.
Instead of having to rely on surveys and manually tracking how people move throughout an area, cities can instead rely on sensor-derived data, providing far greater resolution and a pool of data to draw from orders of magnitude larger than ever before available.
Government officials can better develop programs to encourage more efficient consumption through taxes and financial incentives, and Big Data is invaluable for informing these programs.
By relying on machine learning and other artificial intelligence tools, powerful computer systems using sophisticated algorithms can seek out signals that would be lost in the noise using more traditional statistical tools.
The ever-increasing flow of new data has made it nearly impossible for doctors and even large medical organizations to make sense of what the best and latest information is saying.
Computer-based help systems are coming, and Big Data has the potential to make them even better than human-run systems only if they are totally transparent if not our vote is worthless, and democracy as we know it is going to be dead in the water before we become Green. This is frightening.
We must define acceptable use of data and find ways to safeguard our personal information. In doing so, we must be careful that we don’t cut off the innovation and the opportunity for data to improve lives for those who need it most.
Regardless of how advanced technology gets, the need for human insights cannot be removed from the equation.
The online landscape is turning from a playground into a battlefield as to how to handle the complexity of Information with Technology becoming the be-all and end-all.
To put it simply at the end of the whole process humans are needed to make choices about data point combinations.
What we need to understand is what Alfred Adler said,
” What man needs most is to feel secure in his self-esteem. Man is not just a blind glob of idling protoplasm, but a creature with a name who lives in a world of symbols and dreams and not merely matter. His sense of self-worth is constituted symbolically, his cherished narcissism feeds on symbols, on an abstract idea of his own worth, an idea composed of sounds, words, and images, in the air, in the mind, on paper. And this means that man’s natural yearning for organismic activity, the pleasure of incorporation and expansion, can be feed limitlessly in the domain of symbols and so into immortality.”
The fact is that this is what society is and always has been, a symbolic action system, a structure of statuses and roles, customs, and rules for behavior.
We are just becoming conscious of what we are doing to the planet that we live on.
There is no douth with Climate change, future pandemics, mass migration, and energy that we are going to need big data to put things right as the population of the planet increases the demands that we place on it.
But if we peel away the massive disguise that blocks repression over human techniques for earning glory we arrive at the most pressing question of all the main problems of human life. Self-esteem.
If Big Data strips away self-esteem by removing decision-making and motivation we will become worthless products of consumption.
Remember the big tech mantra ” If the product is free then you are the product “
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
With the current pandemic and economic depression, algorithmic entanglement will stratify the populations of countries with barely a question asked.
Now is the time to challenge and examine their underpinnings, by introducing a software program to examine every algorithm in order to establish whether it is a friend or foe. They must be audited yearly to log and access the contents of their programs, and to be issued with health certificates.
It is not possible to go back to test or analyze why decisions are made by algorithms.
They are learning from the environment surrounding them and once they learn we have no way of knowing to any degree – what rules and parameters they are following at which point we have no way of controlling them or knowing how they react with other algorithms.
You only have to look at the stock exchanges, where they are already trying to outwit search other.
So you can be certain that there is going to be a stock exchange crash not caused by the Economic Depression but rather algorithmic greed for profit.
At the moment it seems that while they are out of sight they are out of mind.
But as we are going to see with any covid-19 vaccine and its distribution, algorithms will create their own rules and inevitably polarize society as a whole.
Where the decision is taken by an algorithm (as to who gets vaccinated or how safe it is when the algorithm could be hacked.) is at stake. Apportioning responsibility to any particular segment of code will be almost impossible.
Because they have no knowledge of what they are even being judged on, they will look for supremacy over each other.
Neither the companies using them nor the people making them take responsibility for how they can wreck lives and reinforce stereotypes.
The people making the algorithms don’t take responsibility for users of their code and the people using algorithms place responsibility on the creators.
Self – regulation is no longer viable because the larger the environment into which they are embedding themselves, the more unpredictable they will become.
Indeed software engineers will soon be extinct.
America’s 45th president likes to tweet.
He does this because he sees it as a way to bypass the ‘dishonest media’. Regardless of how you may want the world to be, the learnings from bulk text feeds are as close as we can really get to how the world actually is.
We must open our eyes to the power of algorithms and how dangerous they can be when unchecked.
These issues are not strange. The software can play you for a fool, but we’re still in the early stages however, they are as of now present in our lives making idiotic shopping recommendations, misclassifying pictures, and doing other senseless things.
History is not a predictor of the future – but knowledge can be – we can’t rely solely on mining historic data to draw conclusions; we need to incorporate expert knowledge.
We are Tick Tocking and Clicking our way to no return.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
The present Covid-19 Pandemic might be warping our sense of reality however there is another pandemic that is shaping and will shape our future reality.
We – in many ways, things are way better than they were thanks to technology.
We can work from anywhere because we have the Internet and we have Zoom and all of those platforms.
If you are able to say technology, on the whole, has done well, it probably means you’re in a fairly privileged position.
There’s still a huge digital divide.
Even – there are billions of people who don’t have access to the Internet.
On paper, algorithms sound like the pinnacle of efficiency, but as they’ve become more ubiquitous, there’s a difference between potential and reality both must be separate for the survival of democracy and the forthcoming distribution and administration of any covid-19 vaccine worldwide.
The reality is that Algorithms will be used to distribute and decide who will get the Covid-19 vaccination.
When it arrives algorithms will continue to reflect the biases that it has been and is being trained into machines that are learning a representation of the world that is skewed.
Some will say that Data is neutral. It’s just numbers. It’s just data but the past dwells within our algorithms and the flaws that are in our technology are what’s the algorithm’s information it’s taking in.
I am not just talking about the U.S. presidential election in a few day’s time.
We have already seen artificial intelligence being used in voting or politics how they extend beyond the realm of computer vision.
If we’re defining success by how it’s looked like in the past and the past has been one where men like Donal trump were given an opportunity to Twitt falsehoods, spreading them with the aid of Facebook and others it’s no wonder who gets hired or fired?
Do you get that loan? Do you get insurance? Do you and I pay the same price for the same product purchased on the same platform?
Automating inequality.
Before a human looks at your resume, it gets vetted by algorithms written by software engineers who are involved in the system (without changing the system itself he the engineer is still going to reproduce algorithmic bias and algorithmic harms.)
Any sorts of algorithmic tools that are intended to be used, again, have to be verified for nondiscrimination before it’s even adopted.
We now have an AI system – right? – that can classify skin cancer as well as the top dermatologists but to change society to change what AI is learning in order to create what can be realized is going to be trusted into our lives by the inevitable economic depression.
So a Covid-19 vaccine is going to transfer real power into the world of Data and we can’t fight the power you don’t see, you don’t know about.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
We should be warier of their power. People don’t need to understand something to do it. The algorithm does it for them.
They’re are increasingly determining our collective future.
We are already halfway towards a world where algorithms run everything.
With the current Pandemic, it is, not who will survive, but how and at what cost, not just to economic systems but to our hard-earned freedoms.
Times will be rough as society tries to come up with an appropriate balance between who gets the jab.
When algorithms involve machine learning, ( like track and trace ) they ‘learn’ the patterns from ‘training data’ which may be incomplete or unrepresentative of those who may be subsequently affected by the resulting algorithm.
Modern algorithm developers are focusing on creating algorithms that learn and develop with the data that they encounter. Machine learning is the next step that they are aiming for, with the algorithms deciding the input and outputcompletely.
One of the world’s most used algorithms right now is the search engine algorithm of Google. It determines what people find in their internet searches and is the basis of the entire SEO industry, where people try to ensure that they show up in the top spot.
However, algorithms are much more prevalent than that- the Apple FaceID algorithm decides whether you are who you say you are.
Social Media algorithms tuned to your desires and want’s ensures that everything on your feed will be of interest to you without you knowing what data these algorithms use and what they aim for.
(Google’s search algorithm is more closely guarded than classified secret documents)
It is very convenient for people to follow the advice of algorithms if your high-frequency trading on the stock exchange but some algorithms limit people’s worldview, which can allow large population groups to be easily controlled.
This is why many of the issues raised in this post will require close monitoring, to ensure that the oversight of machine learning-driven algorithms continues to strike an appropriate and safe balance between recognizing the benefits (for healthcare and other public services, for example, and for innovation in the private sector) and the risks (for privacy and consent, data security and any unacceptable impacts on individuals).
Algorithms are being used in an ever-growing number of areas, in ever-increasing ways, however, like humans, they can produce bias in their results, even if unintentional.
They are bringing big changes in their wake; from better medical diagnoses to driverless cars, and within central governments where there are opportunities to make public services more effective and achieve long-term cost savings.
However, the Government should produce, publish, and maintain a list of where algorithms with significant impacts are being used within the Central Government, along with projects underway or planned for public service algorithms, to aid not just private sector involvement but also transparency.
Governments should not just simply accept what the developers of algorithms offer in return for data access.
This is now an urgent requirement because partnership deals are already being struck without the benefit of comprehensive national guidance for this evolving field.
Given the international nature of digital innovation, governments, should establish audits of algorithms, introducing certification of algorithms, and charging ethics boards with oversight of algorithmic decisions.
Governments should identify a ministerial champion to provide government-wide oversight of such algorithms, where they are used by the public sector, and to co-ordinate departments’ approaches to the development and deployment of algorithms and partnerships with the private sector.
Transparency must be a key underpinning for algorithm accountability.
Why?
Because it will make it easier for the decisions produced by algorithms to be explained.
(The ‘right to explanation’ is a key part of achieving accountability and tackling the ethical implications around AI.)
Why?
Because they are also moving into areas where the benefits to those applying them may not be matched by the benefits to those subject to their ‘decisions’—in some aspects of the criminal justice system, for example.
Because algorithms using social media datasets like ‘big data’ analytics, need data to be shared across previously unconnected areas, to find new patterns and new insights.
It’s not COVID-19 that will fuck us all its Profit-seeking algorithms.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In these extraordinary times, I am sure I speak for world citizens that we count on our leaders to bring out their statesmanship and have the courage and imagination to think and work together to fight this pandemic in equally extraordinary ways.
We may be about to face the perfect storm:
A humanitarian disaster, global recession, severe de-globalization, the crash of healthcare systems, social breakdown, conflicting nationalism not forgetting the power of AI, and its algorithms all point to the need for value realignment.
Many of the issues have a history of a basis. So potential risks and ways to approach them are not as abstract as we may think.
How do we actually design a new system that can understand and implement the various form of preference and values of a population?
The ideal system is, of course, a balance between all the needs of the numerous stakeholders the people, and the earth we all live on.
So how do our societies reconcile their own historic aspirations while we are struggling with a world of ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE that is isolating us all into data?
Neither China nor the US, Iran, Indonesia, or any country can insulate themselves from what is to come. COVID-19 should be the exception to — not the extension of –geopolitical rivalry. It should be an opportunity to recover trust rather than advance mistrust.
HOWEVER, WHAT WE WILL WITNESS IS OUR COLLECTIVE INABILITY TO ACT AS ONE. (DUE TO A MENSTRUUM OF REASONS FAR TO LONG TO ADDRESS HERE.)
From what we see to date:
With the erosion of democratic institutions, with the rise of the right, loss of jobs, false news, rising inequality, foodbanks, our inability to tackle Climate change, stop wars, without any robust mechanisms of oversight and accountability for Profit-seeking algorithms there seems little hope for future generations.
Artificial intelligence now embedded in our daily lives has still to show empirical evidence that validates that AI technology will achieve a broad base of social benefit we aspire to.
We need a community of researchers worldwide to really understand the range of potential harms that AI systems pose. The use of data, machine learning, their applications to society – Face recognition -Track and Trace- all in use without any regulations.
Therefore there is only one solution to the problems facing us all and that is the introduction of a basic living wage for all.
Why?“
Because Cash is the best thing you can do to improve health outcomes, education outcomes, and lift people out of poverty. It’s the only solution to an economy where a small group of people is getting very, very wealthy while everyone else is struggling to make ends meet.
It would remove the problem with existing welfare programs that keep people below the poverty line a form of structural inequality.
It would also cost governments less simplifying welfare programs.
A guaranteed income would give young couples the confidence they need to start a family.
From a macro viewpoint, it would give society a much-needed ballast during a Depression.
It would offset job losses caused by technology.
What are the downsides?
Inflation.
Who funds it?
Many would support it if tech companies with profit-seeking algorithms paid for it.
High-frequency trading.
Hedge Funds, Sovereignty wealth funds, and currency trading over $50,000
Cash is King.It’s an idea that is long overdue.
Both the Current pandemic and Automation are fundamentally changing the structure of the economy. Proposals for various forms of regular cash assistance are increasingly part of the political conversation. And in fact, the cash payments of 2020 are serving as something of a real-life test of the principles behind UBI, even if there are important differences.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
No one has the ability to control the outcome of the ovarian lottery, and whether you were born into a life of privilege or disadvantage this COVID-19 business is beginning to ask us all questions about the Capitalist system that has and is failed us.
The one thing that this crisis is doing is making more space to acknowledge that our losses and our failures aren’t our individual faults.
This is now blatantly and brutely clear.
Let’s start with a few very basic questions.
Do people exist to serve the economy, or should the economy exist to serve people?
Can we create an economy that operates on anti-capitalist principles, rather than for private profit?
With COVID-19, it turns out that we’ve created a whole society with culture and institutions around the idea that people exist to serve the economy.
And now millions of people are waking up to the reality that that’s a misplaced priority.
What we need is a money system that actually is connecting real resources with real needs, creating real community wealth at the community level.
That requires a financial system that is rooted in the community and accountable to community interest and that operates by life values rather than financial values.
The biggest problem with our current financial system is that it’s very short-term obsessed.
So we need to change that whole culture. And that means changing what we measure and that now will come with either rewards or unintended consequences of all of us.
Without fundamentally changing as to how we see the economy the current system which is organized around financial values over life values will continue.
If we don’t take the same attitude toward nurturing the human life cycle as we do toward saving the environment from global warming and industrial pollutants were fooling ourselves.
WHAT WE ARE NOW WITTISING ARE COUNTRIES STRUGGLING TO RESTART THEIR ECONOMIES AS IF NOTHING HAS HAPPENED. RETURNING TO WORK WITHOUT ANY NEW VISION AS TO HOW TO CHANGE THE SYSTEM.
So our era is intensifying the almost daily choice for each of us – faced with a moment of unknowing, a new challenge, do I:
In other words, we all facing a lethal challenge with a profound urge to survive and yet without any guarantee of success.
This current ruthless system where the individual desire to succeed overrule all common sense to look after the real rewards of the value of life has kept us up to now quiet about our countries failures.
There are still nurturant values: Freedom, opportunity and prosperity, fairness, open two-way communication, community building, service to the community, and cooperation in a community, trust, honesty.
The world is a dangerous place and it always will be, so let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.
We’ve come a long way but the question remains do our lives have any meaning, any purpose? Every life has two bookends—the day we’re born and the day we die.
Each of us is born with tremendous potential, but ironically, we often end our lives much like we began—weak and helpless and if we are to learn anything from this pandemic it is that the meaning of life is a demanding question, and many dismiss it as simply unanswerable.
The truth of the matter is that every stage of life is equally significant and necessary.
Where do you fit into this story of human life?
In general, worldview has been most influenced by religion and science.
The belief system determines what we think is possible, and what we think is possible influences the results we create or allow in life.
If you think that you are connected with all of life, you will be more apt to steward your environment with care and treat others with compassion. However, if you think that only your race or social class should rule, your behavior will most likely be very brutal.
On a larger scale, however, our beliefs are predominantly determined by those who control our access to information (media) and our social structures, (including schools), because these institutions dictate what beliefs and behaviors are rewarded and which are punished.
So the prevailing worldview of the 21st century, in which war is considered a viable or necessary means of problem-solving, that starvation is inevitable for some people on this planet, and that it is right for some people to tax and control others against their will, is the result of a well-organized elite who own the systems through which information and values are disseminated.
We are careening into a world of a few haves and billions of suffering have-nots.
It is critical to consider this if we want to protect one another, as well as our planetary home, and to turn the direction of humanity toward thriving.
Above all what we need is. To consider the motivation and funding sources of those who are shaping our worldview.
We are at a critical crossroads where our information and our courage enables us to choose to create a thriving world based on protecting the rights of every individual or as our recent trajectory of misinformation and confusion continues to lead us into a global Data police state – seeking daily permission to act from the dictators of one-world tyranny run by Global Data platforms.
We must learn ethical evolution quickly…
What can be done?
First, we must stabilize our climate.
Our sentience, our feelings of wonder and awe emerge out of the universe… These profound feelings are not just ours; they are the universe reflecting upon itself… To live is to enter this beauty, surrounded by enchantment, summoned by magnificence.
Secondly, we must overcome the powerful addiction of our smartphones, of money, power, career, and ego needs of every type. This momentum has kept suffering alive despite the enormous changes in human existence from age to age.
Then, we must not allow Artificial Intelligence to control our minds. Rather than just doing the next centralization of power into the hands of a few as we wake up, do our own thinking, connect with others, and take action, humanity has what it takes to thrive.
Furthermore, we must stop experience every aspect of our lives through the lens of our set of beliefs, personalized social media filters, racism, greed,.
Which is more primary in finding our way, the rights of the individual, or the opinion of the majority about what’s good for the group?
Finally, “Everything we need is already here and we can access it by recognizing and acting from our oneness.” – Kimberly Gamble
Will we do any of it?
Not likely.
Why?
Because we are unable to act as one.
The world’s population is expected to hit seven billion in the next few weeks.
The number of people on Earth has more than doubled in the last 50 years.
As I see it, the economy is just a social construction that lets people produce and exchange goods and services. You can’t serve a social contract. In the end, the agreed-upon valuation between sellers and buyers is all that matters.
What’s it all mean then?
I think the worst thing we could do would be to actually throw out capitalism and I think what we…the second-worst thing we could do would be to actually fail to reform it.
We need to re-orientate capitalism and the financial markets to make them more long-term focused, not let’s put it back in a box.
There is only one way that we might act together is by creating a perpetual funded World Aid fund, ( See previous posts) with a Constitution for the Earth and the use of all technology.
Remember that the economy depends on millions of factors that can have both a positive and negative impact, while the stock market is only affected by one factor, the supply and demand of stocks.
So, again, the stock market is not the economy. And the economy is not the stock market.
GDP is not a means to a healthy economy unless it protects the smallest ant to the biggest
All of us will be a long time dead so hopefully, your legacy will continue after your stages of life have ended.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Post COVID-19 this will become a question that we will all have to ask yourselves.
Coronavirus came after a series of wake-up calls.
Perhaps the COVID-19 outbreak is the wake-up call the world needs to get people accustomed to the fact that because of climate change, we all now need to change our lifestyles to protect our lives.
The COVID-19 outbreak should be a wake-up call that the economic and social costs of climate change will likely be so catastrophic – potentially many times worse than what we’re currently witnessing – that as a nation and the community of nations, we can’t afford not to take massive measures to combat and mitigate the dangers.
Confronting climate change will take a global effort far beyond any that’s been on the table so far, and far beyond the voluntary commitments in the Paris Climate accord.
We don’t yet know how long the COVID-19 outbreak will last, how many people will get sick or die, or the ultimate cost to global wealth and to people’s jobs and homes.
However, it seems obvious to say that, if we can transform the economy for a virus, we can also do so to prevent climate change.
Acres of column inches have already been written about how the Coronavirus is going to change our economies, politics, and societies forever.
We can choose to prioritize something – in this case, human life – above the maximization of profit and even our individual freedom.
Unchecked, climate change will wreak far greater damage on our ability to live safe, profitable, happy, and free lives than COVID-19.
Despite the brief dip in emissions due to COVID-19, there is a risk that the pandemic – which is likely to dominate politics for months or even years to come – will overshadow environmental concerns.
Mortimer Adler Said ” To regard anyone except yourself as responsible for your judgment is to be a slave, not a free man. It is this fact that the liberal arts acquire their name.”
For most of human history, the only other reliable sources of information were other people.
We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found. If we know that a fact is only a Google away, then we’re not going to waste precious synaptic space on it. Better to let a server remember.
Or is it?
Feel like you’re losing grip of your memory. Google it.
Every time we recall a memory we also remake it, subtly tweaking the neuronal details. (This is why the more we remember something, the less accurate the memory becomes.) Although we like to think of our memories as being immutable impressions, somehow separate from the act of remembering them, they aren’t.
A memory is only as real as the last time you remembered it.
The brain has no interest immaculate recall – it’s only interested in the past to the extent it helps us make sense of the future.
By having memories that constantly change, we ensure that the memories stored inside our mental file cabinets are most relevant.
Although our memories always feel true – as a literal recording of the past – they’re mostly not, since they’re always being edited and bent by what we think now. And now. And now.
And this is where the internet comes in. One of the virtues of transactive memory is that it acts like a fact-check, helping ensure we don’t all descend into selfish solipsism. ( Solipsism: The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified)
By sharing and comparing our memories, we can ensure that we still have some facts in common, that we all haven’t disappeared down the private rabbit hole of our own reconsolidations.
I don’t think it’s a sign that technology is rotting our cortex – I think it shows that we’re wise enough to outsource a skill we’re not very good at.
Because while the web enables all sorts of other biases – it lets us filter news, for instance, to confirm what we already believe – the use of the web as a vessel of transactive memory is mostly virtuous. We save hard drive space for what matters, while at the same time improving the accuracy of recall.
But if a fact stored externally were the same as a memory of that fact stored in our mind, then the loss of internal memory wouldn’t much matter.
External storage and biological memory are not the same things.
When we form, or “consolidate,” a personal memory, we also form associations between that memory and other memories that are unique to ourselves and also indispensable to the development of deep, conceptual knowledge.
The associations, moreover, continue to change with time, as we learn more and experience more.
The essence of personal memory is not the discrete facts or experiences we store in our mind but “the cohesion” which ties all those facts and experiences together.
What is the self but the unique pattern of that cohesion?
Our over-reliance on google and the smartphone search engines is destroying our memories – ‘digital amnesia’.
Google in its very nature is making us stupid, making us more likely to recallwhere the facts are rather than the facts themselves.
We hold the answers to just about all of life’s questions in our palms today. But that means our brains are feeling free to take some R & R.
If you have no working memory, you can have no longterm memory and you understand very little.
The growing reliance on the world wide web for fact-checking is rotting our memories.
We off-load memories to the cloud just as readily as we would to a family member, friend, or lover.
Almost all information today is readily available through a quick internet search. It may be that the internet is taking the place not just of other people as external sources of memory but also of our own cognitive faculties becoming an extension of our own intelligence, rather than a separate tool.
At this point, you might be asking why is any of this important.
Indeed, As the specter of creeping authoritarianism – as emergency disaster measures become normalized, or even permanent – it should be at the forefront of our minds.
Because the consequences of COVID-19 will reorder society in a dramatic way, and this combined with climate change we are witnessing a tipping point as to how the world is going to work.
Unfortunately, we constructed a world that could not be more suited to a Pandemic – density everywhere- inward rural migration and now Data harvesting.
We can expect greater efforts to digitally capture and record our behavior in urban areas – and fiercer debates over the power such surveillance hands to corporations and states.
One consequence of coronavirus could be an entrenchment of exclusionary political narratives, calling for new borders to be placed around urban communities – overseen by leaders who have the legal and technological capacity, and the political will, to build them.
In other words an intensification of digital infrastructure in our cities to track the spread of COVID-19 using “big data” analysis to anticipate where transmission clusters will emerge next.
This much is certain:
Just as this disease has shattered lives, disrupted markets and exposed the competence (or lack thereof) of governments, it will lead to permanent shifts in political and economic power in ways that will become apparent only later.
It will be a time of contradictions.
Internationally, many issues that appeared pressing prior to the pandemic will likely recede in prominence once the world begins its recovery. All non-coronavirus issues will be pushed aside.
Not only because of a shared experience but also because of the mutual assistance that will be required at the same time, democracies must prevent the emergence of a big brother-style intrusion into the personal sphere by the security apparatus.
Such a thing can only occur in the absence of massive civilian oversight.
Many countries will set up committees of inquiry to find out why they and their healthcare systems were caught unprepared, humanity is destined to return to its old self after the adjustment period ends. And that, on balance, is a good thing.
Coronavirus will not end globalization, but it will change it by disrupting our lives and causing painful tragedy —it may introduce a new acceptance of unpredictability into our thinking.
This is certainly not the last time that we’re going to have these kinds of disease eruptions if we deny, delude, and delay on climate change.
We know what to do to halt climate change, we just have to do it.
Our current sense of risk — such as when it is safe to cross a road — is insufficient to deal with threats that are so dire they must be minimized; we need a complete rethink.
If we don’t we will have unregulated algorithms run the world.
How much of life can now be conducted digitally?
If we can accept canceled flights, closed schools, postponed sporting fixtures now, perhaps we can accept restraints in the future.
If we can rely on international co-operation now, perhaps we can summon the same spirit again.
At some point, a nudge will be required. If the shock of coronavirus disruption isn’t enough for us to recalibrate, what will be?
Our Memories!
We have to recognize there will be other pandemics and be better prepared. We must also recognize that climate change is a deeper and bigger threat that doesn’t go away, and is just as urgent.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Emergency powers have a tendency to kindle emergencies.
Granted most of these powers adopted by countries to stop the spread of the coronavirus are needed.
At the moment we are not concerned and willing to give up liberties that were won by the sacrifice of millions of lives before us for the common good.
We also know that in order that contact tracing could be more effective if it wasn’t voluntary. But it is vital, that our governments, that these powers (granted to governments during times of crisis) do not continue once COVID-19 is over.
The COVID-19 pandemic is barely four months old and there is no doubt that when it is over that “big data” will present new challenges as well as opportunities.
The threat of a disease as a “pretense” to justify authoritarian impulses to amass power and that technology can be used as a tool in that process could create a Big Data surveillance machine.
One present-day example comes from South Korea, which introduced an electronic system that sends out an automatic alert to people living nearby a known COVID-19 case.
Or Chinese authorities that are using software to sort citizens into color-coded categories — red, yellow, green — corresponding to their level of risk for having the virus.
Or for instance what if Google introduces a smartphone App that monitors social distancing. It will know your whereabouts down to 2 meters -7/7.
Or Governments introduce GPS to track the movements of citizens without their consent to prohibit gatherings of other 250 people. But what if the governor used that measure to stop a rival’s political rally?
But more importantly, if consumers don’t trust a smartphone-based tracking system, they can simply leave their phones at home. That would render the technology useless.
Even if voluntary it might provide people with a false sense of security if they don’t get an alert. Those who have opted out of tracking might be walking around with COVID-19 and infecting others without ever being picked up with the system.
Just think about it.
The potential in using new technology for public health surveillance to get ahead of an infectious disease outbreak must be tempting, so-called contact tracing,
There is a real danger that we could end up creating a society of untouchables. (The former name for any member of a wide range of low-caste Hindu groups and any person outside the caste system.)
Moreover, unless public health officials are involved, there’s potential to “game” the system by falsely claiming a person has the virus when they haven’t tested positive for it. That could lead to other harms, like a business intentionally undermining a rival or a political party suppressing participation.
A terror attack and a pandemic are vastly different, but both present opportunities for governments and the private sector to take on new powers in the name of keeping citizens safe.
The September 11th terror attacks led to the Patriot Act, in the USA, which gave the federal government vast new investigative powers that it claimed were necessary for the fight against terrorism.
During the HIV crises in many cases, public health officials would notify an HIV patient’s past sexual partners that they may have been in contact with somebody who had the disease, but never identified or named them.
One of the big issues at the time was the idea of doctors reporting the names of HIV patients to the states. Some states refused to accept name-based reporting so for years because they feared that it would discourage people from getting tested.
Public health and privacy rights do not need to be in opposition.
Good public health must respect civil liberties, and anything that advances human rights and civil liberties would advance public health.
So we are going to be faced with the rights of Individual freedoms against collectivism.
The behaviors that define individualism may also enhance the likelihood of pathogen transmission, and thus may be functionally maladaptive under conditions in which pathogens are highly prevalent.
By contrast, the behaviors that define collectivism may function in the service of anti-pathogen defense, and thus be especially adaptive under conditions of high pathogen prevalence.
The question is which one will we choose or will we have a choice when all this is over.
An open-air prison-like the Gaza Strip or Equality among all.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
